Review: Secret Six: The Darkest House

As I mentioned the last time I wrote about a Secret Six trade, I drifted away from the title around the time its initial artist Nicola Scott left and it became apparent that J. Calafiore was going to be her permanent replacement; looking back, I guess I read 16 of its 36 issues in the serially-published, comic book-comic book format, and just recently started rounding up the last couple of trades worth of issues (Thanks, Ohio public libraries!).

This past week I read two collections, Secret Six: Danse Macabre (#15-#18, plus Suicide Squad #67) and Secret Six: The Darkest House (#30-#36, plus Doom Patrol #19). The former was no damn good, consisting of a single issue in which writer Gail Simone introduces her Birds of Prey character Black Alice to the team (an issue featuring some of the worst published art I've ever seen), a Ostrander-written time-waster starring Deadshot and then the Ostrander/Simone Blackest Night arc, in which her Six fights his Suicide Squad—plus Black Lantern versions of deceased Squad members.

The latter was much better, and a good chunk of it would have made a pretty strong climax to Simone's run on the title...and the characters and concept, which she actually started writing a few years earlier than Secret Six #1 with some miniseries and specials.

There are three stories contained in this trade.

The first is a crossover story with the short-lived, Keith Giffen-written 2009-2011 Doom Patrol series (How short-lived? I actually totally forgot that series existed, despite having read the first few issues, until I saw an issue of it in this trade). That's called "Suicide Roulette," and the first half is by the regular Secret Six team of Simone and Calafiore; in it, a young, put-upon slacker inherits his grandfather's secret criminal empire and decides to use those resources to become a 1950s-style, Rat Pack-esque super-ganster. In order to secure an island HQ, he hires the Six and sics them on The Doom Patrol, who were defending Oolong Island.

The second half appeared in DP and was written by Giffen, with rushed, uneven art by a trio of different pencil artists.

It's basically just a big, 40-page fight with no real impetus or conclusion or stakes. Apparently, the crossover was meant to buttress the sales of one or the other title by introducing the few readers of one to the other. Or something.

As a nothing-but-fighting and a few jokes story, it's fine. It's the the eight-memember Secret Six (Bane, Scanal, Deadshot, Catman, Ragdoll, Jeannette, Black Alice and King Shark) versus the new and improved Doom Patrol (Robotman, Elasi-Woman, Negative Man, Bumblebee and Ambush Bug).

It's followed by the three-part title story, which is devoted to two threads. In the sub-plot, Scandal's current girlfriend, a stripper who works at a strip club where she dresses and dances as Scandal's dead ex-girlfriend Knockout, is abducted by a crazy guy in an extremely red jacket, who wants to convert her from lesbianism and stripping by pouring hot sauce in her eyes.

In the main plot, Scandal and Ragdoll fight over the Get Out of Hell Free card from the very first Secret Six story arc and, when he's mortally wounded, he uses it to transport himself to hell. The Scandal and the remaining team (sans Black Alice, who was already in Hell and did not care for it enough to go back).

DC's Hell is a perfect playground for Simone and the black humor and black melodrama that she seems to delight in the writing of in this title. It also serves as the ultimate example of the bad guys-versus-worse guys premise of the series, as hell is literally full of the worst of the worst. Our heroes, who are all villains, actually seem like heroes again when compared to the devils and demons they face down there.

The setting also serves as a super-heated pot where the long simmering sub-plots can all come to a full, roiling boil, and story elements from throughout the run are revisited and resolved: Not only the use of the card, but we also see the return of deceased original members Knockout and The Parademon, Catman checks in on his parents (who Simone has crafted a nicely mythological fate for, and there's a neat twist regarding one person's heaven being another person's hell) and the various characters all expressly determine what they mean to one another and their perception of themselves.

It also gives Calafiore the opportunity to draw lots of ugly, fucked-up shit, which he's pretty damn good at. I"m not into his art, but his drawing of Catman's mom was nicely disturbing, and the demonic forms the Six take while in Hell are pretty intersting.

It would have been the perfect ending to the series, really. But the last issue of the arc must have shipped in the summer of 2011, and Simone still had to keep the title going for two more issues before "The New 52" canceled and replaced the universe that Secret Six belonged to. So there's one more story in here, the two-part "Caution to the Wind," which follows up on at least one plot point from "Darkest House": Bane, the villain who once defeated Batman and conquered Gotham City, realizes that he's going to hell anyway, so there's no point in trying to live by a noble code, and, also, he doesn't want to be the joke character Simone has been writing him as anymore, but would rather go back to being Batman's archenemy.

So he goes back on venom, and talks his teammates into helping him re-break Batman and re-conquer Gotham City.

Now, his plan in "Knightfall," when he first beat Batman, was to a) study Batman and his methods, until he knew everything about him, including his secret identity, b) break every single one of Batman's enemies out of Arkham Asylum simultaneously and heavily arm them, c) wait for Batman to run himself ragged fighting and re-capturing them all, and then d) chill out in the Batcave and wait for the exhausted Batman to come home and then beat the living hell out of him and break his spine.

His plan here is a) capture The Penguin and force him to give up intel on the Bat-family b) Kill the random assortment of Bat-hangers-on Red Robin, Batgirl (Stephanie Brown), Catwoman and Azrael (Not Jean-Paul Valley, the newer one) by having two members of the Six double-team each of 'em and c) hope that demoralizes Batman into quitting. Or something.

It's not a very convincing turn for the character, and the plan is kind of dumb, ill-formed and poorly-communicated. Simone seems to have been going for a twist ending, but in order for that twist to land at all, it needs to seem genuine, but Simone never has Bane make a good case for his turn back towards supervillainy, nor for the rest of the Six—all of whom just escaped hell and got a pretty good idea what awaits people who continue to act like total bastards and doing stuff like killing teenagers for no real reason—to go along.

It ends with the eight members of the Six holed up in a wareshouse, surrounded by just about every superhero in the DC Universe, and having to decide whether to surrender or go out fighting. As in the climax of The Dark House, they choose fighting-to-the-deah over surrender, but it's a pretty weak, false choice here, since obviously they're not going to go out in a blaze of glory, since it's not like Batman and Superman are going to cut them down as they try to plow through them.

Oh, and Bane gives 'em all venom before they make their charge, which means Calafiore draws the ladies with cleavage veins and Catwman with a severe case of Liefeld mouth:

Not cool, Calafiore.

I suspect the trunctuated ending might have had something to do with the abrupt end of the DCU and replacement with the New 52, and that this was a later, longer story that got smooshed into fewer pages and scheduled before Simone would have liked (something seriously seems missing between the end of "Darkest House" and the beginning of "Caution to the Wind"), but, whatever the reason, it's a whimper of an ending after the bang of the previous story arc.

*******************

So, what happened to the individual members of the Secret Six in the New 52?

I've seen Deadshot and King Shark on the covers of Sucide Squad, and see that King Shark was rebooted from a Great White shark to a poorly-drawn hammerhead shar (Actually, he looks like a Great White with alien eye-stalks, as if the peron who designed him never saw a picture of a hammerhead, and wasn't sure how to go about finding one).

I've also heard Deadshot doesn't have a mustache in the New 52.

I'm pretty sure I've seen Bane on the covers of some Batman comics too, so obviously he still exists.

Scandal appeared in a Vandal Savage arc of DC Comics Presents, right? Or was that another female descendant of the immortal caveman villain...?

What of Ragdoll, whose status as a legacy villain I assume means he's not allowed on Earth-New 52, but must rather belong to Earth-2...?

What about Catman...?

I assume Jeanette and Black Alice, as Simone creations, haven't turned up in the New 52 yet. I also assume Knockout hasn't, since we've only seen a handful of Fourth World characters so far.

Pre-New 52 review: Secret Six: Cats in the Cradle

This trade collects issues #19-#24 of Secret Six, which includes the four-issue story arc it takes its title from, and two done-in-one, space-filler stories. "Cats in the Cradle" refers to a 1974 folk rock song by Harry Chapin about a father's poor relationship with his son, and how such prioritizing work over family can be passed down like other genetic traits or family traditions. Writer Gail Simone apparently chose it because Taken was already taken.

If you've not read Secret Six, it's a comic book about a six-person team of mercenary villains including Batman villains Catman and Deadshot, an original version of Ragdoll, Scandal Savage (the daughter of Vandal Savage) and other characters who come or go to replace the ones that get killed off or betray the team.

It was written by Gail Simone, who introduced the team in the 2005 Villains United miniseries, and it lasted until 2011's thirty-sixth issue. When it launched, it featured art by Nicola Scott, but J. Calafiore took over at one point, the point at which I stopped reading the book, not being a fan of Calafiore's artwork, which I find, rough, ugly and full of way too many lines.

In this story, the Secret Six—of which there are actually seven, including Bane and Simone creation Black Alice—attempt to destroy Brother Blood's cult at the behest of a rich, eccentric old man. Said rich, eccentric old man also hires a team of killers to kidnap Catman Thomas Blake's infant son from his supervillain mother Cheshire (the fertile supervillain who is also Roy Harper/Speedy/Arsenal/Red Arrow's baby mama), and, over the phone they threaten to delay killing the boy for one year for each and every member of Blake's team that Catman is able to kill.

Catman thinks a moment, remembers Taken (or at least its trailer), and responds as Liam Neeson did to the captors of his daughter:

Catman then goes AWOL, tracking the three men who took his son in order to brutally murder the fuck out of them, while his fellow killers-for-hire track him in order to help him or stop him or something. During the course of this, Simone flashes back to Catman's "secret origin," in which we learn his abusive, big game-hunting father was a huge asshole who killed his mom, and who Catman then killed in retaliation.

Secret Six has always been one of the modern DC Comics' most violent and decadent series not written by Geoff Johns, but it's also been the one where all that violence and decadence fits best, rather than feeling inappropriately grafted on, like some kind of debilitating tumor, as the very premise of the series is that it's about some of the worst supervillains regularly fighting the absolute worst supervillains. The book should wallow in darkness; the characters should be fairly unlikeable, even morally abhorrent.

That said, darkness and decadence and amoral protagonists aren't exactly what I want to read about in the DC Universe, so I tired of the book pretty quickly, especially when its main redeeming quality—Scott's art—was stripped away. Simone can be a pretty funny writer at times, but at other times she can take a good joke too far by simply telling it over and over again. A good example in this storyline comes at the beginning, when Ragdoll is asked what he's thinking, and he delivers a few-sentence long monologue about how devastating the abuse he suffered as a child was, and then non-sequitirs into "But then I thought...'I wonder what it's like to ^%$# a butterfly?'"...and then he keeps talking about fucking a butterfly long after the surprise has worn off (And yeah, they can't say "fuck" in the book, although a naked Cheshire can bite a man's lips off and, later, Catman can bite a guy's eyeballs out of his head).

Call me crazy, but I prefer a Catman who is a bored wealthy socialite big game hunter who one day decided to dress up in a cat costume to fight Batman for kicks and who also wore a magic luck cape, or even one who simply commits cat-themed crimes and occasionally uses a giant robot cat, to one who is a sadistic killer with a fucked-up childhood.

I was rather pleasantly surprised by Calafiore's artwork in this storyline. It seemed a lot smoother and more accomplished than the last time I had seen it—Gotham Underground—and the ugly character designs and over-usage of lines and the shadows they create actually seems appropriate for the content of a book like this, telling a story like this.

The final two stories of the book are pretty weird. One is "Predators," which is basically "The Most Dangerous Game," featuring the Secret Six as the prey, and it reads, looks and feels like the inventory story it no doubt was. It was written by John Ostrander, and drawn by R.B. Silva and Alexandre Palamaro. I read it when it was originally published in comic book form, and wrote about it the night I read it here.

The final story is by the Simone and Calafiore creative team, back after their one-issue break, and it's called "Unforgiven", so apparently Simone didn't even bother to disguise this one's film inspiration. It's essentially a done-in-one Elseworlds story, in which the members of the team appear as Old West versions of themselves, in the Old West. Also, The Trigger Twins are in it. It's interesting enough, but pretty random, and I'm not sure what point it served, beyond killing another issue.

My absolute favorite aspect of this entire collection, however, is the cover of the trade, which was taken from the cover of Secret Six #21. Catman is triumphantly holding a dead mouse...but he's all beat to hell himself. I like the way the cover implies that there was just an epic battle between Catman and the mouse and, while Catman ultimately defeated the mouse, the mouse put up a terrific fight, and kicked six kinds of shit out of Catman before finally falling to Catman's superior size and strength.

Secret Six was one of several DC titles that didn't survive the New 52 purge of September 2011. Sales on the title were always fairly low, based on the estimates those of us who aren't DC Comics have access to, and it was at cancellation level, but the gigantic boost the New 52 gave all of the titles might have kept it alive longer, essentially resetting it's dial from the cancellation level it was shipping at in the summer of 2011 to the hit levels of so many New 52 books.

I suppose it's possible it was cut on account of continuity—I'm not sure how Bane has been changed by the reboot, for example, or if Deadshot and Catman still have their ex-Batman villain cache in tact—but it's also possible that Suicide Squad was designed to take Secret Six's place as the darkest and most violet DCU book, the one dealing with bad guys fighting worse guys, so having Suicide Squad di>Secret Six running simultaneously might have seemed redundant.

It's also possible Simone gave it up in order to take on new assignments too, and they thought it wouldn't be worth doing without Simone. When the New 52 launched, she was moved to the new Batgirl and was co-writing The Fury of Firestorm, although she's no longer working on the latter title.

I don't think Calafiore is currently drawing anything for DC, but I'm not positive about that.

Being Free Doesn't Make Them Any Better Pt. 3: Batman: Battle for the Cowl Companion

If there was a pointlessness about Batman: Battle for the Cowl, it does double for Batman: Battle for the Cowl Companion, a trade paperback collecting a half-dozen one-shots, each with two-colon titles beginning with Batman: Battle for the Cowl: that were published around the same time as the main Battle miniseries.

That series focused mainly on the three contenders to be the replacement Batman, and answered the not-terribly-important questions regarding why the most obvious candidate took the job. The stories in these one-shots check in with various Batman supporting characters to see what they were up to while the three Robins were fighting and Black Mask II entered into a gang war with The Penguin, Two-Face and all the random theme gangs Tony S. Daniel created.

As such, they’re even less important than the completely unimportant Battle miniseries, if we’re judging these things by their “importance” to the overall, overarching Batman story, which is, after all, how they were being sold.

I suppose they may work better when read in this sort of trade collection. They seem more like chapters in an anthology, like a collection of vignettes, which relieves each of them of some pressure of having to stand on their own (And this way, we’re not subjected to all those terrible, two-colon titles; each comic is presented as a chapter of an anthology, with the title of the story before it, so instead of seeing Batman: Battle for the Cowl: Commissioner Gordon #1, you just see “A Cold Day in Hell.”)

The flip side of that is, of course, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot binding them together, beyond the fact that they’re stories about Batman’s supporting characters in Batman-less stories.

Anyway, let’s take ‘me one at a time…


Batman: Battle for the Cowl: Commissioner Gordon #1 by Royal McGraw and Tom Mandrake

The worst policeman in comic book history—who went something like 45 years before ever actually closing a case—gets the spotlight, as Gordon is captured by Mister Freeze and then manages to escape, bring Freeze down and save Gotham City from an icy WMD without any help from Batman or any other superhero types.

There’s a panel in the third issue of Battle for the Cowl where Gordon says “After what freeze put me through, nothing scares me anymore.” If you read that were all like, “Wait, what? Did I miss something?” then this is what it is that you missed.


Batman: Battle for the Cowl: Man-Bat #1 by Joe Harris and Jim Calafiore

It was while I was reading this issue that I realized I’ve probably read too many Batman comics in my life; I’ve certainly read all of the Man-Bat-as-tortured-werewolf-type stories I’ll ever need to.

In this story, Dr. Kirk Langstrom is having bad dreams and being angsty about the fact that he sometimes turns into a half-bat, half-man. Then he gets kidnapped by Doctor Phosphorus. Then he gets away.

This one features the Outsiders in it, who look at Man-Bat on one page and then, later, return at the end to look at him again. Also, Alfred is lurking in the shadows during the final scene.

I assume this is some sort of set-up to a story arc in The Outsiders title, but it reminded me of one of Tim O’Neil’s recent-ish criticisms of The Outsiders as a book devoted to depicting the adventures of a bunch of characters who aren’t Batman trying to fill in for Batman.

A couple of months ago, I read Gotham Underground in trade, and I’ve now read all of the Calafiore-drawn comics I ever need to read.


Batman: Battle for the Cowl: Arkham Asylum #1 by David Hine and Jeremy Haun

Just as I’ve probably read all the Man-Bat-as-tortured-werewolf-type stories I’ll ever need to read, at this point I’ve read all the Dr. Jeremiah Arkham-is-in-charge-of-the-asylum-but-maybe-he-should-be-an-inmate-himself stories I’ll ever need to read.

This is one more of those. Set sometime after Black Mask II destroys the asylum and lets loose the inmates, it deals with Arkham returning to rescue a trio of extraordinary patients who were kept in a secret place only he had access to.

Hine does create some new characters, which is a relief–too few Batman writers seem to spend any time adding villains, preferring to play with the same ten or so over and over again. (At least, I think these characters are all new. It’s the first I’ve heard of any of them).

While I don’t think any of them will end up being the next Joker, they’re colorful and seem to fit in with the rest of the inmates fairly well.

This creative team is also responsible for Arkham Reborn, a three-issue miniseries which actually oughta be wrapping up sometime soon. This story reads more like a prelude to that then a tie-in to Battle, but I suppose the point was to serve as a bridge leading from a big Bat-event into a miniseries.


Batman: Battle for the Cowl: The Underground #1 by Chris Yost and Pablo Raimondi

This is one of the two stories that ties most directly into the events of Battle. The focus is on The Penguin, drawn to resemble Danny DeVito in Batman Returns so completely that he looks nothing like The Penguin in Battle, hiring The Riddler, who also doesn’t’ look anything like he does in Battle, to find out what Black Mask II is up to. Additionally, we see a little more of the Penguin/Two-Face/Mask gang war, we see the gun-toting Batman fight Catwoman, and we see Riddler and the gals who will eventually star in Gotham City Sirens come together.

I didn’t find anything terribly interesting about it, but it didn’t really do anything terribly wrong either (outside of Raimondi’s weird character designs). It basically just went through the motions, but it didn’t stumble while doing so.


Batman: Battle for the Cowl: The Network #1 by Fabian Nicieza, Jim Calafiore, Don Kramer and Mark McKenna

This is an issue of Birds of Prey, save with a different title and with art mostly provided by Calafiore. Oracle manages the small army of vigilantes that cameo-ed throughout Battle, while most of her attention for this issue is focused on having Batgirl Cassandra Cain and The Huntress bust up a Saw-like Internet gambling/game show thing that Hugo Strange has set up.

As with the previous one-shot/chapter, it’s nothing worth seeking out, but nothing to be tied to a stake and burnt as a witch either. The writing’s maybe a little better than Daniel’s in Battle, but the story is less eventful. I like Calafiore’s art style less than Daniel’s, but the former has a better sense of story-telling than the latter.


Taken all together, it’s extremely inessential reading, even if you’re super-interested in Battle, and really only fit for people who have read every other Batman-related trade available and want one more.

Diving into Deadpool

According to popular twentieth century comic book artist/industry bad word Rob Liefeld in a recent Newsarama comment thread, his co-creations Cable and Deadpool are now “the center of the X-Universe and Deadpool is the most popular character in comics, soon to be fronting 4 monthly titles.”

That’s not remotely true, of course.

Even if you define “comics” as “American superhero comics,” Deadpool was outsold in August by titles featuring Captain America, The Hulk, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Wolverine’s son, Batman, Dick Grayson-as-Batman, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, The Flash Barry Allen, Batwoman and Batgirl III (That’s not counting team and ensemble titles, of which plenty of others out-sell Deadpool, but comparing Deadpool to The Fantastic Four or Justice League doesn’t seem fair).

And as for how many titles Deadpool fronts, Marvel’s only announced three (and how long will that last?). But even if it is four, Deadpool’s still not fronting as many as Batman, Superman (when he gets back in town), Wolverine and probably Spider-Man, depending on the month.

I thought it was kind of astonishing for Liefeld to be bragging about Deadpool’s current popularity, precisely because it seems so very surprising.

His relatively long-running (for modern comics) solo title was cancelled in 2000 at #69, to make way for short-lived Agent X, which featured a Deadpool-like character who ended up not being Deadpool. Whether it was cancelled originally due to low sales, or as part of an ill-advised rebranding that killed it, Deadpool was title-less for a few years, at which point he returned in Cable & Deadpool, which lasted fifty issues before getting axed.

When he got his own title again in 2008, it apparently proved successful enough to justify more and more Deadpool comics. From outside Marvel’s offices, it’s not clear why they feel comfortable putting out multiple Deadpool comic all of a sudden. The main title is selling respectably—50,000-ish units in August—but is hardly a hit book.

Maybe it’s a relatively rare instance of the character itself being popular enough to moves 50,000 books, so Marvel can hire writers and artists who don’t cost as much as those at the Mark Millar/Brian Michael Bendis level, and thus its cheaper for them to produce Deadpool, making it a more profitable book?

I have no idea.

But it seems quite remarkable that in so little time Deadpool went from sharing a title to having two ongoings—Deadpool and Deadpool: Merc With a Mouth—with a third one, Deadpool Team-Up, set to start publication next month.

What accounts for the sudden surge in relative popularity? I can’t guess.

Maybe it has something to do with his appearance in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (which I haven’t seen yet, but which I understand features a Deadpool that’s pretty different than the comics version), or the announcement of an upcoming Deadpool movie starring Ryan Reynolds.

Maybe Marvel is just being extremely shrewd and short-term profit-oriented (surprise!). That is, perhaps someone at Marvel HQ noticed that the Deadpool solo was doing surprisingly well and/or making a lot of profits due to how cheap it was to produce compared to hit comics, and they decided to strike while the iron was hot and sell as many Deadpool comics as possible while Deadpool comics seem to be selling.

At any rate, hearing about all these new Deadpool title announcements has had me wondering about the character and his popularity. I thankfully missed his introduction in the nineties (I never liked Liefeld’s art, even as a teenager reading a couple of Image books), and have never been very interested in Marvel’s mutant comics.

As I’ve mentioned before, I could sort of see what people could see in the character. Aspects of his look and personality seemed borrowed from Spider-Man, but he also had guns and killed people like The Punisher, and, of course, he had ties to the X-Men, and a whole lot of people really liked the X-Men for a really long time. I just couldn’t see it for myself, because I never really looked.

A few months back, I finally got the opportunity to do so, when I was gifted a moving friend’s comics collection, which included a sizable run of Deadpool comics, with only a few holes here and there. It was among the first of that wheelbarrow full of old comics I read (runs of Cable, Gambit and some various X-Men comics are still in a pile, daring me to read them), in order to satiate my curiosity about the character.

So over the course of a couple of weeks, I worked my way through a bunch of Deadpool comics, and typed up my thoughts on them while doing so.


Deadpool #44

This is the earliest Deadpool issue I have, and although it’s from the summer of 2000, it’s worth noting just how much Marvel comics have changed during these past nine years.

The cover has the old, pre-little red box with white “Marvel” Marvel Comics logo, it has the little box in the upper left corner for a picture of the lead character (which I believe originated in response to the way comics used to be racked, in spinner racks. So even if most of the cover were obscured by the rack or the comic right below it on the rack, a browser would be able to spot the character in the corner), it only cost $2.25 and it was approved by the Comics Code Authority.

This story is entitled “Cat Trap (Or: Wakanda Merc Are You?),” and is the first part of a two-part crossover with Black Panther. It’s written by Christopher Priest, who was also writing Marvel’s Black Panther ongoing at the time, and drawn by J. Calafiore.

I like Priest quite a bit, and his superhero books are ones I’m always glad to find in back-issue bins (I managed to track down his whole Justice League Task Force run and have just about completed his run on DC’s The Ray, but have a long way to go with his Black Panther yet).

He’s one of those writers whose name I’m surprised I don’t see more often any more. He’s great with character, he’s very funny (often without being silly) and he seems to be constantly trying new and different ways to tell the same old stories.

As this story starts, Deadpool is apparently sharing an underground base with a couple of roommates—villains Titania and Constrictor—and as the story opens, it’s been infiltrated by The Reverent Michael Ibn al-hajj Achebe, whom as far as I can tell is basically just an off-brand Joker.

He hires Deadpool to kidnap the new Black Panther’s leopard, Preyy (with two y’s…not sure how that’s pronounced). The new Black Panther is, apparently, Erick Killmonger (Best. Name. Ever.), who is filling in for T’Challa while he…sits in a chair in some weird, undeground Wakandan Star Wars-looking labyrinth of wires and sci-fi stuff, I guess.

Anyway, it’s a whole lot of back-story, but I got through it without giving up and throwing the comic against the wall, as when I try reading X-Men comics form this period, so Priest is clearly doing something right.

The story itself is pretty simple. Because the new Black Panther, whom narrator Everet K. Ross calls “KillPanther” is hanging out with the Avengers during this period, Deadpool must fight the Avengers.

(In another sign of how old this comic is, The Avengers consist of Triathalon, Iron Man, Hank Pym, The Wasp, and She-Hulk.

So after a few pages of back-story filling-in, there’s a lot of rat-a-tat-tat banter between various players, and then a fight scene. Priest stays outside Deadpool’s head for the most part, so his craziness makes him seem more remote and amusing than when he’s played more sympathetically, as a point-of-view character.


Black Panther #23

“Cat Trap” continues in BP, which is drawn by Sal Velluto and Bob Almond (So now the characters all look bigger, rounder and more realistic than they did under Calafiore’s flatter, more jagged and compact figure work).

Deadpool and his roommates have been captured by The Avengers, who go to Wakanda looking for their captured teammate Triathalon (Deadpool teleported him along with Preyy).

Velluto’s Deadpool is really weird looking; the featureless face makes the head look extra tiny atop the titanic body Velluto gives his superheroes.

There’s a lot of fighting in this.


Deadpool #45

This is apparently the climax of Priest’s run on the title, in which the specific circumstances he set up are all taken away. Titania’s revealed to be, um, another character (I probably don’t need to worry about spoilers on nine-year-old comics, huh?), Deadpool and his roomies lose their pad, and a curse ‘pool’s been suffering from—in which he is given the face of Hollywood actor “Thom Cruz” is taken away.

Priest gets some gags out of that, but man, I hate when superhero comics half-use real celebrities and public figures like that. Either give him the face of Tom Cruise or don’t. You can say “Tom Cruise” in a comic book without getting sued, particularly in circumstances like these where it’s clear you’re not trying to pretend your Tom Cruise is the real Tom Cruise (Tom the Dancing Bug gets away with it pretty regularly). And if you’re afraid Cruise might be too litigious, try a different celebrity (Maybe Freddie Prinze Jr. woulda signed off? He was cool being in The Ultimates).

But by going with “Thom Cruz” it just calls attention to the fact that you’re—the writer, the editor, the company, the company’s lawyers, whoever—wants to make a particular joke, but is afraid to. And nothing is less funny than caution.


Deadpool#46-#48

This is the launch of a new creative team…or at least a new writer, Jimmy Palmiotti. It’s a three-part storyline entitled “Cruel Summer,” and it’s basically a noir-ish sort of crime story in which a femme fatale seduces Deadpool before turning on him.

It’s executed well enough, although the femme’s betrayal lacks much impact because it’s so hard fto imagine a beautiful woman seriously falling for Wade Wilson who, under his mask, has a Freddy Krueger-like face of red, peeling skin over various pits and boils.

What makes this story arc really special, however, is the art. It’s provided by Paul Chadwick, with Ron Randall on inks.

Man, look at this stuff:

Just gorgeous.


Deadpool #49

Palmiotti gets a writing partner in Buddy Scalera, and Chadwick is gone, replaced by Michael Lopez (Jon Holdredge replaces Randall on inks). This one’s entitled “Cat Magnet,” by which they mean “Pussy Magnet,” but apparently didn’t think they could get away with it (Still Comics Code approved, by the way).

Basically, the story consists of Deadpool, his scarred face disguised, meeting one remarkably scantily clad and sexually aggressive woman after another, often in unlikely places—including an ER nurse and a package delivery person. Deadpool would have to be stupid not to suspect that something is up, but if he does, Palmiotti and Scalera don’t share his suspicions with the reader.

As it turns out, each of these women are the same person, his shape-shifting ex-girlfriend Copycat. (Ah! So the title has a double meaning!)

The cover is by Kevin Nowlan. This run sure has a lot of great talent on covers. It also credits Chadwick and Randall on art, and fails to mention Scalera. Makes me wonder what was going on behind the scenes as these were coming out. The original creative team sure didn’t last in its original form very long at all.


Deadpool #50-#51

Check out these two covers, one by Arthur Adams, the other by Darick Robertson (The latter of whom even Bob Kane-inizes his signature. Neat).


Palmiotti and poor, never credited on the cover Scalera are joined by Darick Robertson on pencils (Holdredge is still inking).

That Robertson sure knows his stuff, and it’s nice to see his art on this old, grittier paper with more comic book-y coloring. There are none of the weird computer coloring effects that are endemic to Marvel comics these days. The skies are drawings of skies, not photos dropped in. Ditto the cityscapes and the moons. It’s all just nice, bold drawings, with nice, bold bright coloring. Beautiful.

This is probably the strongest of Palmiotti’s run (that I’ve read), in which he applies a standard element of superhero comics to Deadpool just to see what happens. In this case, it’s giving Deadpool a sidekick, Kid Deadpool.


Deadpool #52-#53

A two-parter featuring Deadpool versus two scantily clad, serial-killing twin teenage sisters with Barbie doll bodies. It’s pretty silly-bordering-on-stupid stuff, and it was in this issue that I noticed something that would grow to be a pet peeve of mine throughout this experience, the pop culture references.

They’re easy to make and can be funny, but they sure don’t have much shelf life. I think I noticed it here simply because the narration boxes mention Jennifer Lopez’ Oscar gown on the first page, and the second page has a character refer to the killer sisters as “those two Brittany-looking twins.” In 2001, “Brittany-looking” had a different meaning (and certainly different connocations!) than it does in 2009, and I wonder what it will mean, if anything, if this is read in 2019, or 2069 (I don’t think it will be, but still)

Oh, another new art team for this “Talk of the Town” storyline. It’s Anthony Williams and Andy Lanning, and their work is pretty nice.


Deadpool #54-#55

And now it’s time for a guest star! It’s a two-part Punisher story, drawn by Georges Jeanty and Holdredge. Two great covers, by the two artists probably best associated with The Punisher at this period in his career:

Deadpool doesn’t really translate to Tim Bradstreet’s realistic world as easily as Frank Castle does, does he?

This story is a continuation of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s initial Punisher story, Welcome Back, Frank (which Palmiotti inked). It turns out, Ma Gnucci had a single, surviving relative, who would inherit all her money after her untimely death, so long as the condition of her will is met—her death must be avenged.

So Ma’s nephew Peter Gnucci hires Deadpool to kill The Punisher for him.

The two killers fight and fight and fight and—surprise!—neither of them dies.


Deadpool #56

It’s the end of another creative team’s run, although, to be fair, the word “team” might not really apply, given all the comings and goings. For this issue, Palmiotti himself is gone, and Scalera gets the sole writing credit. Karl Kerschl’s on art now, inking himself.

With this single issue, Scalera does a deck-clearing story along the lines of the one Priest provided at the end of his run, with all of the supporting characters being sent away from Deadpool, and his home again getting destroyed.

The issue is divided into two plots.

One follows Deadpool trying a variety of Wile E. Coyote-style traps to catch and kill a super-speedster named “The Street Speeder,” whose costume is yellow and blue and who says little other than “Meep meep” (GET IT?!).

The other follows Copycat disguised as Deadpool to go on a date with and then beat the hell out of an X-person. Siryn, I think. I suppose I should be thankful I got this far without a single reminder that Deadpool is technically an X-Men character.

This, by the way, is the first one without the Comics Code Authority stamp of approval on the cover. There’s no Marvel replacement rating either though.


Deadpool #57-#59

The title received a pretty radical makeover with #57, and I wonder if it caused much—or even any—confusion among comic shop patrons the week it was released. It certainly confused me, when I sat down to try and put all the Deadpool comics in order to read.

Marvel ditched the logo with the character image in the corner (the image shape had, over the months, shifted from a rectangular one to a circular one). The new logo is in a completely different smaller, thinner font, and is actually much smaller than the name of the storyline. In fact, based on the logo, it seems like it is an entirely different book, one called Deadpool: Agent of Weapon X.

Adding to the confusion is the big #1 on the cover, with a smaller “57” under it. So this looks like the first issue of a new series, but it is actually the fifty-seventh issue of an old series in disguise (This doesn’t seem to be a matter of Marvel relaunching and retaining their old numbering, as they sometimes did, because “Agent of Weapon X” and this weird numbering only lasted three issues).

The covers for these three issues, by the way, are by original Weapon X series artist Barry Windsor Smith, and they are thus fairly awesome.

Here’s the cover of #58, in which Smith must draw a trio of terrible costume designs:
Deadpool’s temporary new look makes him look like a little KGBeast, doesn’t it?

The new writer is Frank Tieri, and the new, more steady art team is Georges Jeanty and Holdredge.

Tieri seems on pretty sure footing with all the Marvel super-people and shadow organization intrigue, and while his version of Deadpool is a zany, agent-of-chaos type of character, the rest of the narrative doesn’t conform around Deadpool’s personality. That is, the story would be pretty straightforward and serious if you plucked out Deadpool and plopped in, say, Wolverine, which is probably how it should be.

While I like the way Tieri constrains the comedy to Deadpool’s character instead of the structure of the book in general, I don’t think his Deadpool is particularly funny, and he seems to go for an abundance of pop culture gags. In Deadpool’s very first panel, for example, he mentions that “Barbie Girl” song (the existence of which I had completely forgotten), Liberace, VH1’s Behind The Music, Magilla Gorilla, The Weakest Link and Gilbert Gottfried.

The plot involves the old Weapon X re-starting as a free agency, offering alumni like Sabretooth and Deadpool amped-up powers and resources if they come to work for them. In Deadpool’s case, he gets his face back, but he can’t reconcile working with Sabretooth, who’s been killing and eating people left and right, and some of the other bad guys—especially the agency sets its sites on his ex.

Sabretooth totally murders her, by the way.


Deadpool #62

I’m missing two issues, including the final “Agent of Weapon X” one (presumably, he avenges Copycat without actually killing Sabretooth), and the first issue of the next arc, which is also designed to look like a stand alone miniseries.

This one’s called “Funeral For a Freak,” and once again has the little confusing numbering going on. (This is also, by the way, the first cover featuring the little image of a red, white and blue ribbon above the silhouette of the World Trade Center towers. I guess I never noticed when these first arrived on Marvel covers and when they went away, but they seemed to be there for a while).

Tieri, Jeanty and Holdredge engage in an odd mid-nineties, “Death of Superman” era parody, in which Deadpool is seemingly killed (he actually just has amnesia and is living on the streets) and is replaced by four different new Deadpools. No idea how it started or ended, as I only have the second and third parts of the arc.


Deadpool #67

In some ways, this is the best of the Deadpool issues I read, as it’s the first in which the writing is very sharp and the art’s really great.

It’s written by Gail Simone, who is perfectly at home writing superheroics and comedy simultaneously, and the art comes courtesy of Udon studios—I’m not sure who does what on art chores, as the credits don’t parcel out credit by the task, but from pencil to colors its all well done, boasting the look of anime cels-as-panels that Udon was doing so well at the time.

Having missed a few issues, it seems Deadpool’s status quo has changed quite a bit again, but it wasn’t too difficult to feel my way through the issue. Deadpool is hanging on to a shrunken Rhino, whom he’s using as a key chain, and is tasked with body-guarding Dazzler, in all her disco roller-skating glory.

While this is the all-around best creative team I’ve read on the book, even they didn’t last long. According to comics.org, they took over with #65, and the series was canceled with #69.

Is 2008's Batgirl #1 the worst comic ever?

It's definitely a contender. Here are three consecutive pages from the comic, which was written by Adam Beechen, pencilled by J. Calafiore and inked by Mark McKenna (and I hope they're all ashamed of themselves):

I suppose it's technically possible for those pages to be worse. Beechen could have spelled half of those 1,500 words wrong, for example, or Califiore could have drawn the characters without necks, or perhaps even less symmetrically than he already did or something, but man, the "creative" team would really have to put some effort into making worse comics pages than these. Because that? That's about as wrong as you can possibly get a comic book.

If you read through all that dialogue—and I wouldn't recommend it—you'll see the characters aren't even really communicating throughout the second and third pages, they're merely summarizing the events of other comic books in which Batgirl appeared over the course of the last two years, occasionally adding details that happened off-panel by way of explaining the many inconsistencies between those comics and the Batgirl appearances that preceded them. It's the type of information you'd find in an Official Guide to the Marvel Universe entry, or perhaps a very thorough Wikipedia page, only put in dialogue bubbles.

That isn't comics, it's Adam Beechen trying to explain and apologize for a bunch of other shitty comic books, many of which he himself also wrote. It cost $17.94 as part of a six-month payment plan, or $19.99 to get it all at once.